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OUR 
NEW DUTIES 



A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AT THE 

SEYENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY 

THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1899 



OUR NEW DUTIES 



A COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AT THE 

SEVENTY- FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF MIAMI UNIVERSITY 

THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1899 



BY 

WHITELAW REID 



NEW YORK 
PRINTED FOR THE UNIVERSITY 

1899 



E""^/' 



;7 



t-triAM 




MIAMI UNIVERSITY. 



Hon. John W. IIekuox. LL. D., (;'incinn.iti. Ohio. 
President of the Board of Trustees. 

Miss ANNA .1. BlfiHOr, Oxfoi(i, oliio. 

Secretary of the Board of Trustees. 

Kev. W. O. THOMPSON, D. 1).. 

I^esident of the Vnirersity. 

Oxford, Ohio, June 27, 1S9G. 
Hon. Whitelaw Reid, LL. D, 

New York. 
Dear Sir : 

At the request of Dr. Thompson, tlie President (who is writing you on the subject), 
I enclose you a copy of a resolution adopted by the Board of Trustees of Miami Uni- 
versity, at a meeting held June 17, 1896. 

Hoping it may be possible for you to be present, as requested, at our Seventy-fifth 
Anniversary, I am Very truly yours, 

Anna J. Bishop, 

Secretary of the Board. 



Excerpt from Mixnlct of Meeting of Board of Trusteei/ of Miami Uiiiversifij, 
held June 17, 1896. 

Mr. Hunt offered the following resolution, which was adopted : 

" Wliereas the Seventv-fifth Anniversary of the founding of Miami University will 
mark an important event in the history of the educational work — not only in the 
Miami Valley, but in the Western Country ; and 

" Whereas, this Board contemplates the commemoration of that occasion by appro- 
priate exercises in every way worthv of the fame of the institution : 

"Therefore, Be it Resolved: That the Board of Trustees of Miami University, m 
recognition of the importance of that anniversary and the fitting ability of the Hon- 
orable Whitelaw Reid, of the chiss of 1856, and tlie interest wliich he has always 
manifested in his Alma Mater, does hereby tender to him, in behalf of all the friends 
of Miami University, a cordial in\'itatiou to be present and participate in the exercises 
by delivering the address at that time." 



OPHIR FARM, 

PURCHASE, N. Y., 

July 10, 1896. 
Miss Anna J. Bishop, 

Secretary Board of Trustees, 

Miami University, Oxford, O. 

Dear Madam : 

I beg to acknowledge your courteous transmission of a resolution by the Board of 
Trustees of Miami University, inviting me to deliver an address on its Seventy-fifth 
Anniversary. 

I am very sensible of the great honor done me by the Trustees of my Alma Mater 
in this invitation. The time is still remote, and one cannot always be sure of his 
ability to fill engagements made so far in advance ; but it would give me the greatest 
pleasure to undertake the work, and I shall endeavor so to shape my affairs as to 
prevent anything from interfering with it. 

With renewed thanks, I am, dear madam, 

Very truly yours, 

Whitelaw Reid. 



ADDRESS 



Sons and FririuJs of Miami : 

I join you in saluting this venerable mother at a notable way- 
mark in her great life. One hundred and seven years ago the 
Congress voted and George Washington approved a foundation 
for this university. Seventy-five years ago it opened its doors. 
Now si monumentum quseris, circumspice. There is the cata- 
logue. There are the long lists of men who so served the State 
or the Church that their fives are your glory, their names your 
inspiration. There are the longer lists of others to whom kinder 
fortune did not set duties in the eye of the world. But Miami 
made of them citizens who leavened the lump of that growing 
West, which was then a sprawling, irregular line of pioneer set- 
tlements and is now an empire. Search through it, above and 
below the Ohio, and beyond the Mississippi. So often — where 
there are centres of good work, or right thinking and right liv- 
ing—so often and so widely spread will you find traces of Miami, 
left by her own sons or coming from those secondary centres 
that grew out of her example and influence, that you are led in 
grateful surprise to exclaim : If this be the work of a little col- 
lege, God bless and prolong the little coliege ! If, half-starved 
and generally neglected, she has thus nourished good learning 
and its proper result in good lives through the three-quarters of 
a century ended to-day, may the days of her years be as the 
sands of the sea; may the Twentieth Century only introduce 
the glorious prime of a career of which the Nineteenth saw but 
modest beginnings, and may good old Miami still flourish in 
ssecula steculorum ! 

But the celebration of her past and the aspirations for her 
future belong to worthier sons — here among these gentlemen 
of the Board who have cared for her in her need. I make them 
my profound acknowledgments for the honor they have done 
me in assigning me a share in the work of this day of days; and 
shall best deserve their trust by going with absolute candor 
straight to my theme. 



6 OUR NEW DUTIES 

New Duties ; I shall Speak of the new duties that are upon us and the new 
a New World ^qy\^ ^j^at is opening to us with the new century — of the spirit 
in which we should advance and the results we have the right to 
ask. I shall speak of public matters which it is the duty of edu- 
cated men to consider; and of matters which may hereafter 
divide parties, but on which we must refuse now to recognize 
party distinctions. Partisanship stops at the guard line. " In 
the face of an enemy we are all Frenchmen," said an eloquent 
imperialist once in my hearing, in rallying his followers to sup- 
port a foreign measure of the French Republic. At this moment 
our soldiers are facing a barbarous or semi-civilized foe, which 
treacherously attacked them in a distant land, where our flag 
had been sent, in friendship with them, for the defence of our 
own shores. Was it creditable or seemly that it was lately left 
to a Bonaparte on our own soil to teach some American leaders 
that, at such a time, loyal men at home do not discourage those 
soldiers or weaken the Government that directs them '? * 

Neither shall I discuss, here and now, the wisdom of all the 
steps that have led to the present situation. For good or ill 
the war was fought. Its results are upon us. With the ratifica- 
tion of the Peace of Paris, our Continental Republic has stretched 
its wings over the West Indies and the East. It is a fact and 
not a theory that confronts us. We are actually and now re- 
sponsible, not merely to the inhabitants and to our own people, 
but in international law, to the commerce, the travel, the civili- 
zation of the world, for the preservation of order and the pro- 
tection of life and property, in Cuba, in Porto Rico, in Guam 
and in the Philippine Archipelago, including that recent haunt 
of piracy, the Sulus. Shall we quit ourselves like men in the 

* My Dear Sir — I have received your letter of the 23ii inst. notifying to me my 
election as a Vice-President of the Anti-Imperialist League. I recognize the compli- 
ment implied in this election, and appreciate it the more by reason of my respect for 
the gentlemen identified with the league, but I do not think I can appropriately or con- 
sistently accept the position, especially since I learn through the press that the league 
adopted at its recent meeting certain resolutions to which I cannot assent. ... I may 
add that, while I fully recognize the injustice and even absurdity of those charges of 
' ' disloyalty " which have been of late freely made against some members of the league, 
and also that many honorable and patriotic men do not feel as I do on this subject, I 
am per.sonally unwilling to take part in an agitation which may have some tendency 
to cause a public enemy to persist in armed resistance, or may be, at least, plausibly 
represented as having this tendency. There can be no doubt that, as a matter of 
fact, the country is at war with Aguinaldo and his followers. I profoundly regret 
this fact. . . . But it is a fact, nevertheless, and, as such, must weigh in determining 
my conduct as a citizen. . . . 

CHARLES JEROME BONAPARTE. 

Baltimore, May 25, 1899. 



POLICY FOR THE NEW POSSESSIONS 7 

discharge of this immediate duty ; or shall we fall to quarrelling 
with each other like boys as to whether such a duty is a good or 
a bad thing for the country, and as to who got it fastened upon 
us? There may have been a time for disputes about the wisdom 
of resisting the stamp tax, but it was not just after Bunker Hill. 
There may have been a time for hot debate about some mistakes 
in the Anti-Slavery contest, but not just after Sumter and Bull 
Run. Fui'thermore, it is as weU to remember that you can never 
grind with the water that has passed the mill. Nothing in hu- 
man power can ever restore the United States to the position it 
occupied the day before Congress plunged us into the war with 
Spain ; or enable us to escape what that war entailed. No mat- 
ter what we wish, the old Continental isolation is gone forever. 
Whithersoever we turn now, we must do it with the burden of 
our late acts to carry ; the responsibility of our new position to 
assume. 

When the sovereignty which Spain had exercised with the 
assent of all nations over vast and distant regions for three 
hundred years was solemnly transferred under the eye of the 
civilized world to the United States, our first responsibility be- 
came the restoration of order. Till that is secured, any hin- 
drance to the effort is bad citizenship — as bad as resistance to 
the police ; — as much worse, in fact, as its consequences may 
be more bloody and disastrous. "You have a wolf by the ears," 
said an accomplished ex-Minister of the United States to a de- 
parting Peace Commissioner last autumn. " You cannot let go 
of him with either dignity or safety, and he will not be easy to 
tame." 

But when the task is accomplished — when the Stars and Policy for 
Stripes at last bring the order and peaceful security they typify, ""^ ^'^'^ 
instead of wanton disorder, with all the concomitants of savage 
warfare over which they now wave — we shall then be con- 
fronted with the necessity of a policy for the future of these 
distant regions. It is a problem that calls for our soberest, 
most dispassionate and most patriotic thought. The colleges 
and the educated classes generally should make it a matter of 
conscience — j^aiustakingly considered on all its sides, with ref- 
erence to international law, the burdens of sovereignty, the 
rights and interests of native tribes, and the legitimate demands 
of civilization — to find first our National duty, and then our 
National interest, which it is also a duty for our statesmen to 
protect. On such a subject we have a light to look to our col- 
leges for the help they should be so well equipped to give. 



8 OUR NEW DUTIES 

From these still regions of cloistered thought may well come 
the white light of pure reason — not the wild, whirling words 
of the special pleader, or of the partisan, giving loose rein to 
his hasty first impi'essions. It would be an ill day for the col- 
leges if crude and hot-tempered incursions into ciirrent public 
affairs, like a few unhappily witnessed of late, should lead even 
their friends to fear that they have been so long accustomed to 
dogmatize to boys that they have lost the faculty of reasoning 
with men. 

When the first duty is done, when order is restored in those 
commercial centres and on that commercial highway, somebody 
must then be responsible for maintaining it — either ourselves 
or some Power whom we persuade to take them off our hands. 
Does anybody doubt what the American people in their present 
temper would say to the latter alternative I — the same people 
who, a fortnight ago, were ready to break off their Joint Com- 
mission with Great Britain and take the chances, rather than 
give up a few square miles of worthless land, and a harbor of 
which a year ago they scarcely knew the name on the remote 
coast of Alaska. Plainly it is idle now, in a government so 
purely dependent on the popular will, to scheme or hope for 
giving the Philippine task over to other hands as soon as order 
is restored. We must then be prepared with a policy for main- 
taining it ourselves. 

Of late years men have unthinkingly assumed that new terri- 
tory is, in the very nature of our Government, merely and 
necessarily the raw material for futui-e States in the Union, 
Colonies and dependencies it is now said are essentially incon- 
sistent with our system. But if any ever entertained the wild 
dream that the instrument whose preamble says it is ordained 
for the United States of America could be stretched to the 
China Sea, the first Tagal guns fired at friendly soldiers of the 
Union and the first mutilation of American dead that ensued 
ended the nightmare of States from Asia admitted to the 
American Union. For that relief, at least, we must thank 
the uprising of the Tagalogs. It was a Continental Union 
of independent sovereign States our Fathers planned. Who- 
ever proposes to debase it with admixtures of States made 
up from the islands of the sea, in any archipelago. East or West, 
is a bad friend to the RepubHc. We may guide, protect, elevate 
them, and even teach them, some day, to stand alone ; but if we 
ever invite them into our Senate and House to help rule us, we 
are the most imbecile of all the offspring of time. 



Objection 



s 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL OBJECTION 9 

Yet we must face the fact that able and conscientious men The 
believe the United States has no constitutional power to hold Constitutional 
territory that is not to be erected into States in the Union, or to 
govern people that are not to be made citizens. They are able 
to cite great names in support of their contention ; and it would 
be an ill-omen for the freest and most successful constitutional 
government in the world if a constitutional objection thus forti- 
fied should be carelessly considered or hastily overridden. 

This objection rests mainly on the assumption that the name 
"United States," as used in the Constitution, necessarily in- | 
eludes all territory the Nation owns, and on the historic fact ? 
that a large part of this territory, on acquiring sufficient popu- « 
lation, has already been admitted as States, and has generally '; 
considered such admission to be a right. Now, Mr. Chief Justice \^ 
Marshall — than whom no constitutional authority carries greater \ 
weight — certainly did declare that the question what was '■ 
designated by the term " United States " in the clause of the ; 
Constitution gi\Hng power to levy duties on imposts " admitted ; 
of but one answer." It " designated the whole of the American | 
empire, composed of States and Territories." If that be accepted ) 
as final, then the tariff must be applied in Manila precisely as 
in New- York, and goods from Manila must enter the New- York 
Custom House as freely as goods from New-Orleans. Sixty 
millions would disappear instantly and annually from the 
Treasury, and our revenue system would be revolutionized by 
the free admission of sugar and other tropical products from the 
United States of Asia and of the Caribbean Sea. On the other 
hand, the Philippines themselves would be fatally handicapped 
by a tariff wholly unnatural to their locality and circumstances. 
More. If that be final, the term " United States " should have 
the same comprehensive meaning in the clause as to citizenship. 
Then Aguinaldo is to-day a citizen of the United States, and 
may yet run for the Presidency. Still more. The Asiatics south 
of the China Sea are given that free admission to the country 
which we so streniiously deny to Asiatics from the north side 
of the same sea. Their goods, produced on wages of a few cents 
a day, come into free competition in all our home markets with 
the prodiicts of American labor, and the cheap laborers them- 
selves are free to follow if ever our higher wages attract 
them. More yet. K that be final, the Tagalogs and other tribes 
of Luzon, the Yisayas of Negros and Cebu, and the Mahometan 
Malays of Mindanao and the Sulus, having each far more than 
the requisite population, may demand admission next winter 



10 OUR NEW DUTIES 

into the Union as free and independent States, with representa- 
tives in Senate and House, and may plausibly claim that they 
can show a better title to admission than Nevada ever did, or 
Utah or Idaho. 

Nor does the gi-eat name of Marshall stand alone in support 
of such conclusions. The converse theory that these territories 
are not necessarily included in the constitutional term "the 
United States" makes them our subject dependencies, and at 
once the figure of Jefferson himself is evoked, with aU the 
signers of the immortal Declaration grouped about him, renew- 
ing the old war-cry that government derives its just powers from 
the consent of the governed. At different periods in our history 
eminent statesmen have made protests on grounds of that sort. 
Even the first bill for Mr. Jefferson's own purchase of Louisiana 
was denounced by Mr. Macon as " establishing a species of gov- 
ernment unknown to the United States"; by Mr. Lucas as 
"establishing elementary principles never previously introduced 
in the government of any territory of the United States," and 
by Mr. Campbell as " really establishing a complete despotism." 
In 1823 Chancellor Kent said with reference to Columbia River 
settlements that " a government by Congi-ess as absolute sov- 
ereign, over colonies, absolute dependents, was not congenial to 
the free and independent spirit of American institutions." In 
1848 John C. Calhoun declared that " the conquest and retention 
of Mexico as a province would be a depai-ture from the settled 
policy of the Government, in conflict with its character and 
genius and in the end subversive of our free institutions." In 
1857 Mr. Chief Justice Taney said that " a power to rule territory 
without restriction as a colony or dependent province would be 
inconsistent with the nature of our government." And now, 
following warily in this line, the eminent and trusted advocate 
of similar opinions to-day, Mr. Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, 
says : " The making of new States and providing National 
defence are constitutional ends, so that we may acquire and hold 
territory for those purposes. The governing of subject peoples 
is not a constitutional end, and there is thei'efore no constitu- 
tional warrant for acquiring and holding territory for that 
purpose." 

An Alleged We have now, as is believed, presented with entire fairness 

Consiitutioiiai ^ simamary of the varied aspects in which the constitutional 
^ objections mentioned have been urged. I would not under- 

rate by a hair's breadth the authority of these great names, the 
weight of these continuous reassertions of principle, the sanc- 



"Tf^ 



AN ALLEGED CONSTITUTIONAL INABILITY 11 

tion even of the precedent and general practice through a cen- 
tury. And yet I venture to think that no candid and competent 
man can thoroughly investigate the subject, in the light of the 
actual provisions of the Constitution, the avowed purpose of its 
framers, theii* own practice and the practice of their successors, 
without being absolutely convinced that this whole fabric of op- 
position on constitutional grounds is as flimsy as a cobweb. 
This country of our love and pride is no malformed, congenital 
cripple of a Nation, incapable of undertaking duties that have 
been found within the powers of every other Nation that ever 
existed since governments among civilized men began. Neither 
by chains forged in the Constitution, nor by chains of precedent; 
neither by the dead hand we all revere, that of the Father of His 
Countrj', nor under the most authoritative exponents of our 
I organic act and of our history, are we so bound that we cannot 
I undertake any duty that devolves, or exercise any power which 
I the emergency demands. Our Constitution has entrapped us 
I in no impasse, where retreat is disgrace and advance is impossi- 
ble. The duty which the hand of Providence rather than any 
purpose of man has laid upon us is within our constitutional 
powers. Let me invoke your patience for a rather minute and 
perhaps wearisome detail of the proof. 

Every one recalls this constitutional provision : " The Con- 
gress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules 
and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the 
United States." That grant is absolute, and the only qualifica- 
tion is the one to be di-awn from the general spirit of the Gov- 
ernment the Constitution was framed to organize. Is it con- 
sistent with that spirit to hold territory permanently, or for 
long periods of time, without admitting it to the Union f Let 
the man who wrote the very clause in question answer. That 
man was Gouverneur Morris, of New York, and you will find 
his answer on the 192d page of the third volume of his writings, 
given only fifteen years after, in reply to a direct question as to 
the exact meaning of the clause : " I always thought, when we 
should acquire Canada and Louisiana, it would be proper to 
govern them as provinces and allow them no voice in our coun- 
cils. In wording the third section of the fourth article, I went 
as far as circumstances would permit to establish the exclusion." 
This framer of the Constitution desired then, and intended defi- 
nitely and permanently, to keep Louisiana out ! And yet there 
are men who tell us the provision he drew would not even per- 
mit us to keep the Philippines out ! To be more Papist than 
the Pope will cease to be a thing exciting wonder, if everyday 



12 OUR NEW DUTIES 

modern men iu the cousideratiou of practical and pressing prob- 
lems ai"e to be more narrowly constitutional than the men that 
wrote the Constitution ! 

Is it said that at any rate our practice under this clause of the 
Constitution has been against the view of the man that wrote 
it, and in favor of that quoted from Mr. Chief Justice Marshall f 
Does anybody seriously think, then, that though we have held 
New-Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma as territories, part of it 
nearly a century, and all of it half a centuiy, our representa- 
tives believed all the while they had no constitutional right to 
do sof Who imagines that when the third of a centiiry during 
which we have already held Alaska is rounded out to a full 
I century, that unorganized Territory will even then have any 

I greater prospect than at present of admission as a State, or who 

I believes our grandchildren will be violating the Constitution in 

I keeping it out? Who imagines that under the Constitution 

I ordained on this continent specifically "for the United States 

I of America^'' we will ever j^ermit the Kanakas, Chinese and Jap- 
I anese, Avho make up a majority of the population in the Sand- 
I wich Islands, to set up a government of their own and claim 

i admission as an independent and sovereign State of the Ameri- 

I can Union ! Finally, let me add that conclusive proof relating 

? not only to practice under the Constitution, but to the precise 

construction of the constitutional language as to the Territories 
by the highest authority, in the light of long previous practice, 
is to be found in another part of the instrument itself, delib- 

/erately added, three-quarters of a century later. Article XIII 
provides that " neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall 
I exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jiiris- 
I diction.'''' If the term " the United States" as used in the Consti- 
I tution really includes the Territories as an integral part, as Mr. 
Chief Justice Marshall said, what, then, does the Constitution 
mean by the additional words, " or any place subject to their 
jm-isdiction " 1 Is it not too plain for argument that the Con- 
stitution here refers to territory not a part of the United States, 
but subject to its jurisdiction — teri'itory, for example, like the 
Sandwich Islands or the Philippines ? 
What, then, shall we say to the opinion of the great Chief 
I Justice ? — for after all his is not a name to be dealt with lightly. 
Well, fii'st, it was a dictum, not a decision of the court. Next, 
in another and later case, before the same eminent jurist came 
a constitutional expounder as eminent, and as generally ac- 
cepted — none other than Daniel Webster — who took preciselj' 
the opposite view. He was discussing the condition of certain 



AN ALLEGED CONSTITUTIONAL INABILITY 13 

\ territory on this continent which we had recently acqiiired. 
Said Mr. Webster: "What is Florida? It is no part of the 
. United States. How can it be f Florida is to be governed by 
gCongi'ess as it thinks proper. Congress might have done any- 
I thing, might have ret'nsed a trial by jury, and refused a Legis- 
'i lature." Well, after this flat contradiction of the court's former 
Idictum what happened! Simply that Mr. Webster won his 
lease, and that the Chief Justice made not the slightest reference 
\o his own previous and directly conflicting opinion ! Need we ; 

give it more attention now than Marshall did then f 

Mr. Webster maintained the same position long afterwai'd in 
the Senate of the United States, in opi^ositiou to Mr. John C. 
Calhoun, and his view has been continuously sustained since by 
the coiu'ts and by Congressional action. In the debate with Mr. 
Calhoun, in Feln'uary, 1849, Mr. Webster said: "What is the 
Constitution of the United States f Is not its very first princi- 
ple that all within its influence and comprehension shall be rep- - 
resented in the Legislature which it establishes, with not only a 
right of debate and a right to vote in both houses of Congress, i 
but a right to partake in the choice of President and Vice-Presi- | 
dent f . . . The President of the United States shall govern I 
this territory as he sees fit till Congress makes further provision. | 
. . . We have never had a territory governed as the United 1 
States is governed. ... I do not say that while we sit here to \ 
make laws for these territories, we are not bound by every one | 
of those great principles which are intended as general securities | 
for public liberty. But they do not exist in territories till in- I 
troduced by the authority of Congress. . . . Our history is J 
uniform in its coui-se. It began with the acquisition of Louisi- / 
ana. It went on after Florida became a part of the Union. In all | 
cases, under all circumstances, by every proceeding of Congress i 
on the subject and by all judicature on the subject, it has been -; 
held that territories belonging to the United States were to be • 
governed by a constitution of their own, . . . and in approving \ 
that constitution the legislation of Congress was not necessarily -^ 
confined to those principles that bind it when it is exei'cised in • 
passing laws for the United States itself." 

Mr. Calhoun, in the course of this debate, asked Mr, Webster 
for judicial opinion sustaining these views, and Mr. Webster 
said that " the same thing has been decided by the United 
States courts over and over again for the last thirty years." I 
may add that it has been so held over and over again during 
the subsequent fifty. Mr. Chief Justice Waite, giving the opin- 
ion of the Supreme Court of the United States (in National 



14 



OUR NEW DUTIES 



Bank agt. Co. of Yankton, 101 U. S., 129-132), said: " It is cer- 
tainly now too late to doubt the power of Congress to govern 
the Territories. Congress is supreme, and for all the purposes of 
this department, has all the powers of the people of the United 
States, except such as have been espresslj^ or by implication 
reserved in the prohibitions of the Constitution." 

Mr. Justice Stanley Matthews, of the United States Supreme 
Court, stated the same view with even greater clearness in one 
of the Utah polygamy cases (Mm-phy agt. Ramsey, 114 U. S., 
44, 45) : " It rests with Congress to say whether in a given case 
any of the people resident in the Territory shall participate in 
the election of its officers or the making of its laws. It may 
take from them any right of suffrage it may previously have 
conferred, or at any time modify or abridge it, as it may deem 
expedient. . . . Their political rights are franchises which 
they hold as privileges, in the legislative discretion of the 
United States." 

The very latest judicial utterance on the subject is in har- 
mony with all the rest. Mr. Justice Morrow, of the United 
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in February, 
1898, held (57 U. S. Appeals, 6): "The now well-established 
doctrine [is] that the Territories of the United States are en- 
tirely subject to the legislative authority of Congress. They 
are not organized under the Constitution nor subject to its 
complex distribution of the powers of government. . . . The 
United States, having rightfully acquired the Territories, and 
being the only Government which can impose laws upon them, 
has the entire dominion and sovereignty. National and muni- 
cipal. Federal and State." 



More Recent In the light of such expositions of our constitutional power. 
Constitutional and our uniform National practice, it is difficult to deal patiently 
Objections ^^^^i the remaining objections to the acquisition of territory, 
pm-porting to be based on constitutional grounds. One is that 
to govern the Philippines without their consent or against the 
opposition of Aguinaldo is to violate the principle, only formu- 
lated to be sure, in the Declaration of Independence, but, as they 
say, underlying the whole Constitution, that government derives 
its just powers from the consent of the governed. In the Sulu 
group piracy prevailed for centuries. How could a government 
that put it down rest on the consent of Sulu? Would it be 
without just powers because the pirates did not vote in its favor? 
In other parts of the archipelago what has been stigmatized as 
a species of slavery prevails. Would a government that stopped 



MOEE RECENT CONSTITUTIONAL OBJECTIONS 15 

that be without just powers till the slaveholders had conferred 
them at a popular election ? In another part, head-hunting is, 
at certain seasons of the year, a recognized tribal custom. 
Would a government that interfered with that practice be open 
to denimciation as an usurpation, without just powers, and 
flagrantly violating the Constitution of the United States, unless 
it waited at the polls for the consent of the head-hunters ? ''The 
truth is, all intelligent men know, and few even in America, ex- 
cept obvious demagogues, hesitate to admit, that there are cases 
where a good government does not and ought not to rest on the 
consent of the governed. If men will not govern themselves 
with respect for civilization and its agencies, then when they 
get in the way they must be governed — always have been, 
whenever the world was not retrograding, and always will be. 
The notion that such government is a revival of slavery, and 
that the United States by doing its share of such work in behalf 
of civilization would therefore become infamous, though put 
forward with apparent gi'avity, in some eminently respectable 
quarters, is too fantastic for serious consideration. 

Mr. Jefferson may be supposed to have known the meaning of 
the words he wi'ote. Instead of vindicating a righteous rebellion 
in the Declaration, he came, after a time, to exercising a right- 
eous government under the Constitution. Did he himself then 
carry his own words to such extremes as these professed disciples 
now demand? Was he guilty of subverting the jiriuciples of 
the Government in buying some hundreds of thousands of 
Spaniards, Frenchmen, Creoles and Indians, "like sheep in the 
shambles," as the critics untruthfully say we did in the Philip- 
pines '? We bought nobody there. We held the Philii^pines 
fii'st by the same right by which we held our own original thir- 
teen States — the oldest and firmest of all rights — the right by 
which nearly every great nation holds the bulk of its territory — 
the right of conquest. We held them again as a rightful indem- 
nity, and a low one, for a war in which the vanquished could 
give no other. We bought nothing ; and the twenty millions 
that accompanied the transfer just balanced the Philippine 
debt. That payment was a recognition of the sound rule of 
international law, obeyed now in the practice of all civilized 
nations, that where debts have been incui-red by a mother coun- 
try legitimately for the benefit of a colony, they follow the 
colony when its sovereignty is transferred. But Jefferson did, 
if you choose to accept the hypercritical interpretation of these 
latter-day Jeffersonians — Jefferson did buy the Louisianians — 
even " like sheep in the shambles," if you care so to describe it ; 



16 OUR NEW DUTIES 

and did i^roceed to govern them without the consent of the gov- 
erned. Monroe bought the Floridians without their consent. 
Polk conquered the Californians, and Pierce bought the New- 
Mexicans. Seward bought the Russians and Alaskans, and we 
have governed them ever since without their consent. Is it 
easy, in the face of such facts, to preserve your respect for an 
objection so obviously captious as that based on the phrase from 
the Declaration of Independence? 

Nor is the turn Senator Hoar gives the constitutional objection 
much more weighty. In that he wishes to take account of mo- 
tives, and pry into the purpose of those concerned in any acqui- 
sition of territory, before the tribunals can decide whether it is 
constitutional or not. If acquired either for the National defence 
or to be made a State the act is constitutional ; otherwise not. 
If, then, Jeiferson intended to make a State out of Idaho, his act 
in acquiring that part of the Louisiana Purchase was all right. 
Otherwise he "sdolated the Constitution he had helped to make 
and sworn to uphold. And yet, poor man, he hardly knew of 
the existence of that part of the territory, and certainly never 
dreamed that it would ever become a State, any more than 
Daniel Webster dreamed, to quote his own language in the 
Senate, that "California would ever be worth a dollar." Is 
Gouverneur Morris to be arraigned as false to the Constitution 
he helped to frame because he wanted to acquire Louisiana and 
Canada, and keep them both out of the Union ! Did Mr. Seward 
betray the Constitution and violate his oath in buying Alaska 
without the purpose of making it a State f It seems, let it be 
said with all respect, that we have reached the reduetio ad 
absurdum, and that the constitutional argument in any of its 
phases need not be further pursued. 

The Little If I have wearied you with these detailed proofs of a doctrine 
Americans which Mr. Justice Morrow rightly says is now well established, 
and these replies to its assailants, the apology must be found in 
the persistence with which the utter lack of constitutional 
power to deal with our new possessions has been vociferously 
urged from the outset by the large class of our people whom I 
venture to designate as the Little Americans — using that term 
not in the least in disparagement, but solely as distinctive and 
convenient. From the beginning of the century, at every epoch 
in our history, we have had these Little Americans. They op- 
posed Jefferson as to getting Louisiana. They opposed Monroe 
as to Florida. They were vehement against Texas, against Cali- 
fornia, against organizing Oregon and Washington, against the 



THE PLAIN PATH OF DUTY 17 

Gfadsden Purchase, against Alaska and against the Sandwich 
Islands. At nearly every stage in that long story of expansion 
the Little Americans have either denied the Constitutional 
authority to acquire and govern, or denounced the acquisitions 
as worthless and dangerous. At one stage, indeed, they went 
further. When State after State was passing ordinances of 
secession, they raised the cry, erroneously atti-ibuted to my dis- 
tinguished p)redeeessor and friend, Horace Greeley, but really 
uttered by Winfield Scott, " Wayward Sisters, depart in peace ! " 
Happily this form, too, of " Little Americanism " failed. We are 
all glad now — my distinguished classmate here,* who wore the 
gray and invaded Ohio with Morgan, as glad as myself — we all 
rejoice that these doctrines were then opiposed and ovei'borne. 
It was seen then, and I venture to think it may be seen now, 
that it is a fundamental principle with the American people, 
and a duty imposed upon all who represent them, to maintain 
the Continental Union of American Independent States in all 
the purity of the fathers' conception ; to hold what belongs to it, 
and get what it is entitled to ; and, finally, that wherever its 
flag has been rightfully advanced, there it is to be kept. If that 
be Imperialism, make the most of it ! 

It was no vulgar lust of power that inspired the statesmen The Piain 
and soldiers of the Republic when they resisted the halting ''*"' "' ^"^^ 
counsel of the Little Americans in the past. Nor is it now. Far 
other is the spirit we invoke — 

Steru daughter of the Voice of God, 
O Duty ! If that name thou love — 

in that name we beg for a study of what the new situation that 
is upon us, the new world opening around us now demands at 
our hands. 

The people of the LTnited States will not refuse an appeal in 
that name. They never have. They had been so oceiipied, 
since the Civil War, first in repairing its ravages, and then in 
occupying and possessing their own Continent, they had been 
so little accustomed, in this generation or the last, to even the 
thought of foreign war, that one readilj' understands why at the 
outset they hardly realized how absolute is the duty of an hon- 
orable conqueror to accept and discharge the responsibilities of 
his conquest. But this is no longer a child-nation, irresponsible 
in its non-age and incapable of comprehending or assuming the 
responsibility of its acts. A child that breaks a pane ofg kes 

• The Hon. Albert S. Berry, M. C. from the Co\-ingtoii. Ky., District. 

3 



18 OUR NEW DUTIES 

or sets fii-e to a house may indeed escape. Are we to plead the 
baby act and claim that we can flounce around the world, break- 
ing international china and burning property, and yet repudiate 
the bill, because we have not come of age ? Who dare say that 
a self-respecting Power could have sailed away from Manila 
and repudiated the responsibilities of its victorious belligerency? 
After going into a war for Humanity, were we so craven that we 
should seek freedom from further trouble at the expense of 
Civilization 1 

If we did not want those responsibilities we ought not to have 
gone to war, and I for one would have been content. But, hav- 
ing chosen to go to war, and having been speedily and over- 
whelmingly successful, we should be ashamed even to think 
of running away from what inexorably followed. Mark what 
the successive steps were, and how link by link the chain that 
binds us now was forged. 

The moment war was foreseen, the fleet we xxsually have in 
Chinese waters became indispensable, not merely as before to 
protect our trade and our missionaries in China, but to check- 
mate the Spanish fleet, which otherwise held San Francisco and 
the whole Pacific coast at its mercy. When war was declared 
our fleet was necessarily ordered out of neutral ports. Then it 
had to go to Manila or go home. If it went home, it left the 
whole Pacific coast unguarded, save at the particular point it 
touched ; and we should have been at once in a fever of apprehen- 
sion, chartering hastily another fleet of the fastest ocean-going 
steamers we could find in the world, to patrol the Pacific from 
San Diego to Sitka, as we did have to patrol the Atlantic from 
Key West to Bar Harbor. Palpably this was to go the longest 
way around to do a task that had to be done in any event ; as 
well as to demoralize our forces at the opening of the war with 
a manoeuvre in which our Navy has never been expert, that of 
avoiding a contest and sailiiig away from the enemy ! The al- 
ternative was properly taken. Dewey went to Manila and Bunk 
the Spanish fleet. We thus broke down Spanish means for con- 
trolling the Philippines, and were left with the Spanish respon- 
sibility for maintaining order there — responsibility to all the 
world, Grermau, English, Japanese, Russian and the rest, in one 
of the great centres and highways of the world's commerce. 

But why not turn over that commercial centre and the island 
on which it is situated to the Tagalogs ? To be sure ! Under 
three himdred years of Spanish rule barbarism on Luzon had 
so far disappeared that this commercial metropolis, as large as 
San Francisco or Cincinnati, had sprung up, and come to be 



THE POLICY FOR OUR DEPENDENCIES 19 

thronged by traders and travellers of aU nations. Now it is 
calmly suggested that we might have turned it over to one 
semi-civilized tribe, absolutely without experience in governing 
even itself, much less a great community of foreigners — proba- 
bly in a minority on the island, and at war with its other in- 
habitants — a tribe which has given the measure of its fitness 
for being charged with the rights of foreigners and the care of 
a commercial metropolis by the violation of flags of truce, 
treachery to the living and mutilation of the dead which have 
marked its recent wanton rising against the Power that was 
trying to help it ! 

If running away from troublesome responsibility and duty is 
our role, why did we not long ago take the opportunity, in our 
early feebleness, to turn over Tallahassee and St. Augustine to 
the Seminoles, instead of sending Andrew Jackson to protect 
the settlements and subdue the savages? Why at the first 
Apache outbreak after the Gadsden Purchase did we not hasten 
to turn over New-Mexico and Arizona to their inhabitants ! Or 
why, in years within the memory of most of you, when the 
Sioux and Chippewas rose on our Northwestern frontier, did we 
not invite them to retain possession of St. Cloud, and even 
come down, if they liked, to St. Paul and Minneapolis ? 

Unless I am mistaken in regarding all these suggestions as 
too unworthy to be entertained by self-respecting citizens of a 
powerful and seK-respectiug Nation, we have now reached two 
conclusions that ought to clear the air and simplify the problem 
that remains. First, we have ample constitutional power to 
acquire and govern new territory absolutely at will, according 
to our sense of right and duty — whether as dependencies, as 
colonies or as a protectorate. Second, as the legitimate and 
necessary consequence of our own previous acts, it has become 
our National and international duty to do it. 

How shall we set about it I What shall be the policy with The Policy 
which, when order has been inexorably restored, we begin our '*•■ o""" 
dealings with the new wards of the Nation? Certainly we "-^p^""^"''^^ 
must mark our disapproval of the treacheiy and barbarities of 
the present contest. Clearly the oppi-ession of other tribes by 
the Tagalogs must be ended ; or the oppression of any tribe by 
any other within the sphei'e of our active control. Wars be- 
tween the tribes must be discouraged and prevented. We must 
seek to su^jpress crimes of violence and private vengeance, 
secure individual liberty, protect individual property and pro- 
mote the study of the arts of peace. Above all, we must give 



20 OUR NEW DUTIES 

and euforce justice ; and for the rest, as far as possible, leave 
them alone. By all means let us avoid a fussy meddling with 
their customs, manners, prejudices and beliefs. Give them 
order and justice and trust to these to win them in other re- 
gards to our ways. All this points directly to iitilizing existing 
agencies as much as possible, developing native initiative and 
control in local matters as fast and as far as we can, and ulti- 
mately giving them the greatest degree of self-government for 
which they prove themselves fitted. 

Under any conditions that exist now or have existed for three 
hundred years, a homogeneous native government over the 
whole archipelago is obviously impossible. Its relations to the 
outside world must necessarily be assumed by us. We must 
preserve order in Philippine waters, regulate the harbors, fix and 
collect the duties, apportion the revenue and supervise the ex- 
penditure. We must enforce sanitary measures. We must 
retain such a control of the supei'ior courts as shall make justice 
certainly attainable, and such control of the police as shall insure 
its enforcement. But in all this, after the absolute authority 
has been established, the further the natives can themselves be 
used to carry out details the better. 

Such a system might not be unwise even for a colony to which 
we had reason to expect a considerable emigration of our own 
people. If experience of a kindred nation in dealing with simi- 
lar problems counts for anything, it is certainly wise for a distant 
dependency, always to be populated mainly, save in the great 
cities, by native races, and little likely ever to be quite able to 
stand alone, while, nevertheless, we wish to help it just as much 
as possible to that end. 

Tiie Duty Certainly this is no bed of flowery ease in the dreamy Orient 
of Public ^Q which we are led. No doubt these first glimpses of the task 

Scrvflots 

that lies before us, as well as the warfare with distant tribes 
into which we have been unexpectedly plunged, will provoke 
for the time a certain discontent with our new possessions. But 
on a far-reaching question of National policy the wise public 
man is not so greatly disturbed by what people say in momen- 
tary discouragement under the first temporary check. That 
which really concerns him is what people at a later day, or even 
in a later generation, might say of men trusted with great duties 
for their country, who proved unequal to their ojDportunities, 
and through some short-sighted timidity of the moment lost the 
chance of centm-ies. 
It is quite true, as was recently reported in what seemed an 



THE DUTY OF PUBLIC SERVANTS 21 

authoritative way from Washington, that the Peace Commission- 
ers were not entirely of one mind at the outset, and equally true 
that the final conclusion at Washington was apparently reached 
on the Commission's recommendation from Paris. As the cold 
fit, in the language of one of our censors, has followed the hot 
fit in the popular temper, I readily take the time which hostile 
critics consider unfavorable, for accepting my own share of 
responsibility, and for avowing for myself that I declai-ed my 
belief in the duty and policy of holding the whole Philippine 
Archipelago in the very first conference of the Commissioners 
in the President's room at the White House, in advance of any 
instnictions of any sort. If vindication for it be needed, I con- 
fidently await the future. 

What is the duty of a public servant as to profiting by oppor- 
tunities to secure for his country what all the rest of the world 
considers material advantages ? Even if he could persuade him- 
self that rejecting them is morally and internationally admissi- 
ble, is he at liberty to commit his country irrevocably to their 
rejection, because they do not wholly please his fancy f At a 
former negotiation of our own in Paris, the gi-eat desire of the 
United States representative, as well as of his Government, had 
been mainly to secure the settled or partly settled country ad- 
joining us on the south, stretching from the Floridas to the city 
of New-Orleans. The possession of the vast unsettled and un- 
known Louisiana Territory, west of the Mississippi, was neither 
sought nor thought of. Suddenly, on an eventful morning in 
April, 1803, Talleyrand astonished Livingston by offering, on 
behalf of Napoleon, to sell to the United States, not the Floridas 
at all, but merely Louisiana, " a raw little semi-tropical frontier 
town and an unexplored wilderness." Suppose Livingston had 
rejected the offer ? Or suppose Gadsden had not exceeded his 
instructions in Mexico and boldly grasped the opportunity that 
offered to rectify and make secure our Southwestern frontier! 

The difficulties which at present discourage us are largely of 
our own creation. It is not for any of us to think of attempting 
to apportion the blame. The only thing we are sure of is that 
it was for no lack of authority that we hesitated and drifted till 
the Tagalogs were convinced we were afraid of them, and could 
be driven out before reinforcements arrived. That was the very 
thing our officers had warned us against — the least sign of hesi- 
tation or uncertainty — the very danger every European with 
knowledge of the situation had dinned in our ears. Everybody 
declared that difficulties were sure to gi-ow on our hands in geo- 
metrical proportion to our delays ; and it was perfectly known 



22 OUR NEW DUTIES 

to the respective branches of our Government, primarily con- 
cerned, that while the delay went on it was in neglect of a duty 
we had voluntarily assumed. 
^ For the American Commissioners, with due authority, dis- 
tinctly offered to assume responsibility, pending the ratification 
of the treaty, for the protection of life and property and the 
preservation of order throughout the whole archipelago. The 
Spanish Commissioners, after consultation with their Govern- 
ment, refused this, but agreed that each Power should be 
charged, pending the ratification, with the maintenance of order 
in the places where it was estabhshed. The American assent to 
that left absolutely no question as to the diminished but still 
grave responsibility thus devolved. That responsibility was 
avoided from the hour the treaty was signed till the horn- 
when the Tagalog chieftain, at the head of an army he had been 
deliberately gathering and organizing, took things in his own 
hand and made the attack he had so long threatened. Disorder, 
forced loans, impressment, confiscation, seizure of waterworks, 
contemptuous violations of oiir guard lines, and even the prac- 
tical siege of the city of Manila had meantime been going on 
within gunshot of troops held there inactive by the Nation 
which had volunteered responsibility for order throughout the 
archipelago, and had been distinctly left with responsibility 
for order in the island on which it was established. If the bit- 
terest enemy of the United States had sought to bring upon it 
in that quarter the greatest trouble in the shortest time, he 
could have devised for that end no policy more successful than 
the one we actually pursued. There may have been controUing 
reasons for it. An ojjposite com-se might perhaps have cost 
more elsewhere than it saved in Luzon. On that point the pub- 
lic cannot now form even an opinion. But as to the effect in 
Luzon there is no doubt; and because of it we have the right to 
ask a delay in judgment about results there until the present 
evil can be undone. 

The Carnival Meantime, in accordance with a well-known and probably 
of Captious unchangeable law of human nature, this is the carnival and very 
heyday of the objectors. The an- is filled with their discourage- 
ment. 

Some exclaim that Americans are incapable of colonizing or 
of managing colonies ; that there is something in our National 
character or institutions that wholly unfits us for the work. 
Yet the most successful colonies in the whole world were the 
thirteen original colonies on our Atlantic coast ; and the most 



THE CARNIVAL OF CAPTIOUS OBJECTION 23 

suecessfiil colonists weve our own grandfathers ! Have the 
grandsons so degenerated that they are incajDable of colonizing 
at all, or of managing colonies f Who says so ? Is it any one 
with the glorious history of this continental colonization bred in 
his bone and leaping in his blood ? Or is it some refugee from a 
foreign country he was discontented with, who now finds pleas- 
ure in disparaging the capacity of the new country he came to, 
while he has neither caught its spirit nor grasped the meaning 
of its history f 

Some bewail the alleged fact that our system gives us no fit- 
ness for managing colonies or dependencies. Has our system 
been found weaker, then, than other forms of government, less 
adaptable to emergencies, and with people less fit to cope with 
them f Is the difficulty inherent, or is it possible that the emer- 
gency may show, as emergencies have shown before, that what- 
ever task intelligence, energy and courage can surmount the 
American people and their Government can rise to ? 

It is said the conditions in our new possessions are wholly 
different from any we have pre\'iously encountered. This is 
true ; and there is little doubt the new circumstances will bring 
great modifications in methods. That is an excellent reason, 
among others, for some doubt at the outset as to whether we 
know all about it, but not for despairing of our capacity to learn. 
It might be remembered that we have encountered some varieties 
of conditions already. The work in Florida was different from 
that at Plymouth Rock. Louisiana and Texas showed again 
new sets of conditions; California others; Puget Sound and 
Alaska still others, and we did not always have imbrokeu suc- 
cess and plain sailing from the outset in any of them. 

It is said we cannot colonize the tropics, because our people 
cannot labor there. Perhaps not, especially if they refuse to 
obey the prudent precautions which centuries of experience have 
enjoined upon others. But what, then, are we going to do with 
Porto Rico f How soon are our people going to flee from Ari- 
zona ? And why is life impossible to Americans in Manila and 
Cebu and Iloilo, but attractive to the throngs of Eui-opeans who 
have built up those cities ? Can we mine all over the world, 
from South Africa to the Klondike, but not in Palawan ? Can 
we gi-ow tobacco in Cuba, but not in Cebu ; or rice in Louisiana, 
but not in Luzon ? 

An alarm is raised that the laboring classes are endan- 
gered by competition with cheap tropical labor or its products. 
How? The interpretation of the Constitution which would 
permit that is the interpretation which has been repudiated 



24 OUE NEW DUTIES 

in an unbroken line of decisions for over tkree-quarters of a 
century. Only one possibility of danger to American labor 
exists in oi;r new possessions — the lunacy or worse of the 
dreamers who want to prepare for the admission of some of 
them as States in the American Union. Till then we can make 
any law we like to prevent the immigration of their laborers, 
and any tariff we like to regulate the admission of their 
l^roduets. 

It is said we are pursuing a fine method for restormg order, 
in prolonging the war we began for humanity by forcing liberty 
and justice on an unwilling people at the point of the bayonet. 
The sneer is cheap. How else have these blessings been gen- 
erally diffused ? How often in the history of the world has 
barbarism been replaced by civilization without bloodshed? 
How were our own liberty and justice established and diffused 
on this continent ? Would the process have been less bloody if 
a part of our own people had noisily taken the side of the Eng- 
lish, the Mexican or the savage, and protested against " extreme 
measures " ? 

Some say a war to extend freedom in Cuba or elsewhere is 
right, and therefore our duty ; but the war in the Philippines 
now is purely selfish, and therefore all wrong. The statement 
is inaccurate ; it is a war we are in duty bound to wage at any 
rate tUl order is restored — but let that pass. Suppose it to be 
merely a war in defence of our own just rights and interests. 
Since when did such a war become wrong? Is our National 
motto to be " Quixotic on the one hand ; Chinese on the other " ? 
How much better it would have been, say others, to mind our 
own business. No doubt ; but if we were to begin crying over 
spilt milk in that way, the place to begin was where the milk was 
spilled — in the Congress that resolved upon war with Spain. 
Since that Congressional action we have beeu minding what it 
made our own business quite diligently, and an essential part 
of our business now is the responsibility for our own past acts, 
whether in Havana or Manila. 

Some say we began the war for humanity, and are therefore 
disgraced by coming out of it with increased territory. Then a 
penalty must always be imposed upon a victorious nation for 
presuming to do a good act. The only nation to be exempt 
from such a penalty upon success is to be the nation that was 
in the wrong ! It is to have a premium ; for it is thus relieved 
from the penalty which modern practice in the interest of civili- 
zation requires, the payment of an indemnity for the cost of an 
unjust war. Furthermore, the representatives of the nation 



THE CARNIVAL OF CAPTIOUS OBJECTION 25 

that does a good act are thus bound to reject any opportunity 
for lightening the national load it entails. They must leave 
the full burden upon their country, to be dealt with in due time 
by the individual taxpayer ! 

Again we have superfine discussions of what the United 
States " stands for." It does not stand, we are told, for foreign 
conquest, or for colonies or dependencies, or other extensions of 
its power and influence. It stands for the development of the 
individual man. There is a germ of a great truth in this, but 
the development of the truth is lost sight of. Individual initia- 
tive is a good thing, and our institutions do develop it — and 
its consequences ! There is a species of individualism, too, 
about a biiUdog. When he takes hold he holds on. It may as 
well be noticed by the objectors that that is a characteristic 
much appreciated by the American people. They, too, hold on. 
They remember besides a pregnant phrase of their fathers, who 
" ordained this Constitution," among other things, " to promote 
the general welfare." That is a thing for which " this Govern- 
ment stands " also ; and woe to the public servant who rejects 
brilliant opportunities to promote it — on the Pacific Ocean as 
well as the Atlantic — by commerce as well as by agriculture or 
manufactures. 

It is said the Philippines are worthless — have in fact already 
cost us more than the value of their entire trade for many 
years to come. So much the more, then, are we bound to do 
oi;r duty by them. But we have also heard in turn, and from 
the same quarters, that every one of our previous acquisitions 
was worthless. 

Again it is said our continent is more than enough for all our 
needs ; and our extensions should stop at the Pacific. What is 
this but proposing such a policy of self-sufficient isolation as 
we are accustomed to reprobate in China — planning to de- 
velop only on the soil on which we stand, and expecting the 
rest of the world to protect our trade if we have any ? Can a 
nation with safety set Chinese limits to its growth ? When a \ 
gf tree stops growing our foresters tell us it is ripe for the axe. I 
I When a man stops in his physical and intellectual growth he I 
I begins to decay. When a business stops gi'owiug it is in danger | 
cf decline. When a nation stops growing it has passed the i, 
I meridian of its course, and its shadows fall eastward. \ 

Is China to be our model, or Great Britain ? Or, better still, \ 

are we to follow the instincts of our own people ! The policy of 
isolating ourselves is a policy for the refusal of both duties and 
opportunities — duties to foreign nations and to civilization 



i 



\ 



26 OUR NEW DUTIES 

which cannot be respectably evaded — opportunities for the 
development of our power on the Pacific in the twentieth century 
which it would be craven to abandon. There has been a curious 
" about-face," an absolute reversal of attitude toward England, 
on the part of our Little Americans, especially at the East and 
among the more educated classes. But yesterday nearly all of 
them were pointing to England as our example. There young 
men of education and position felt it a duty to go into politics. 
There they had built up a model civil service. There their cities 
were better governed, their streets cleaner, their mails more 
promptly delivered. There the responsibilities of their colonial 
system had enforced the purification of domestic politics, the 
relentless punishment of corrupt practices, and the abolition of 
bribery in elections, either by money or by office. There they 
had foreign trade, and a commercial marine, and a trained and 
efficient foreign service, and to be an English citizen was to have 
a safeguard the whole world round. Our young men were com- 
mended to their example ; our legislators were exhorted to study 
their practice and its results. Suddenly these same teachers 
turn around. They warn us against the infection of England's 
example. They tell us her colonial system is a failure ; that she 
would be stronger without her colonies than with them ; that 
she is eaten up with "militarism"; that to keep Cuba or the 
Philippines is what a selfish, conquering, land-grabbing, aristo- 
cratic Government like England would do, and that her policy 
and methods are utterly incompatible with our institutions. 
When a court thus reverses itself without obvious reason (except 
a temporary partisan purpose), our people are apt to put their 
trust in other tribunals. 

The Future " I had thought," Said Wendell Phillips, in his noted apology 
for standing for the first time in his anti-slavery life under the 
flag of his country, and welcoming the tread of Massachusetts 
men, marshalled for war—" I had thought Massachusetts wholly 
choked with cotton dust and eaukei-ed with gold." If Little Amer- 
icans have thought so of their country in these stirring days, and 
have fancied that initial reverses would induce it to abandon its 
duty, its rights and its great, permanent interests, they will live 
to see their mistake. They will find it giving a deaf ear to these 
unworthy complaints of temporary trouble or present loss ; and 
turning gladly from all this incoherent and resultless clamor to 
the new world opening around us. Already it draws us out of 
ourselves. The provincial isolation is gone; and provincial 
habits of thought will go. There is a larger interest in what 



THE FUTURE 27 

other lands have to show and teach ; a larger confidence in our 
own ; a higher resolve that it shall do its whole duty to man- 
kind, moral as well as material, international as well as national, 
in such fashion as becomes Time's latest offspring and its great- 
est. We are grown more nearly citizens of the world. 

This new knowledge, these new duties and interests must 
have two effects — they must extend our power, influence and 
trade, and they must elevate the public service. Every return- 
ing soldier or traveller tells the same story — that the very name 
American has taken a new significance throughout the Orient. 
The shrewd Oriental no longer regards us as a second or third 
class Power. He has just seen the only signs he recognizes of 
a nation that knows its rights and dare maintain them — a na- 
tion that has come to stay, with an empire of its own in the 
China Sea, and a Navy which, from what he has seen, he be- 
lieves will be able to defend it against the world. He straight- 
way concludes, after the Oriental fashion, that it is a nation 
whose citizens must henceforth be secure in all their rights, 
whose missionaries must be endured with patience and even 
protected, and whose friendship must be sedulously cultivated. 
The National prestige is enormously increased, and trade follows 
prestige — especially in the Farther East. Not within a century, 
not during our whole history, has such a field opened for our 
reaping. Planted directly in front of the Chinese colossus, on a 
great territory of our own, we have the first and best chance to 
profit by his awakening. Commanding both sides of the Pacific, 
and the available coal supplies on each, we command the Ocean 
that, according to the old prediction, is to bear the bulk of the 
world's commerce in the twentieth century. Our glorious land 
between the Sierras and the sea may then become as busy a hive 
as New-England itself, and the whole continent must take fresh 
life from the generous blood of this natural and necessary com- 
merce between people of different climates and zones, who gladly 
buy from each other what they do not produce themselves. 

But these developments of power and trade are the least of 
the advantages we may hopefully expect. The faults in Ameri- 
can character and life which the Little Americans tell us pi'ove 
the people imfit for these duties are the very fav;lts that will be 
cured by them. The recklessness and heedless self-sufficiency 
of youth must disappear. Great responsibilities, suddenly de- 
volved, must sober and elevate now, as they have always done 
in natures not originally bad, throughout the whole history of 
the world. 

The new intei'ests abroad must compel an improved foreign 



28 OUR NEW DUTIES 

service. It has heretofore been worse than we ever knew, and 
also better. On great occasions and in great fields our diplo- 
matic record ranks with the best in the world. No nation stands 
higher in those new contributions to international law which 
form the highwater mark of civilization from one generation to 
another. At the same time, in fields less under the public eye, 
our foreign service has been haphazard at the best and often 
bad beyond belief — ludicrous and humiliating. The harm thus 
wrought to our National good name and the positive injmy to 
our trade have been more than we realized. We cannot escape 
realizing them now, and when the American people wake up to 
a wrong they are apt to right it. 

More important still should be the improvement in the gen- 
eral public service at home and in our new possessions. New 
duties must bring new methods. Ward politics were banished 
from India and Egypt, as the price of successful administra- 
tion, and they must be excluded from Porto Rico and Luzon. 
The practical common sense of the American people will soon 
see that any other course is disastrous. Gigantic business in- 
terests must come to reinforce the theorists in favor of a reform 
that shall really elevate and purify the Civil Service. 

Hand in hand with these benefits to ourselves, which it is the 
duty of public servants to secure, go benefits to our new wards 
and benefits to mankind. There, then, is what the United 
States is to "stand for" in all the resplendent future: — the 
rights and interests of its own Government ; the general wel- 
fare of its own people ; the extension of ordered liberty in the 
dark places of the earth ; the spread of civilization and religion, 
and a consequent increase in the sum of human happiness in 
the world. 



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